Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

“But ulcers can be dealt with.
 
Boredom on the other hand….”

“Margot, boredom is what we grow here.
 
It’s our principle product.
 
It isn’t just the woman you were nice enough to take to dinner last night; it’s all of us. We may pride ourselves on being a little artists’ community, but that’s all we are.
 
We’re
little
artists, emphasis on
little
. Renoir does not live here.
 
We’re not even the South of France.
 
Margot, Bay St. Lucy is not Chicago.”

“All right,” Margot answered. “You’re right. I’m sorry to complain.
 
The ulcers are much better.
 
And Nina, I do appreciate Bay St. Lucy. I’m very happy here, for all my complaining.
 
If I were insane enough to go out socially with people in Chicago, I’d find them just as wretchedly boring.
 
It’s only that I had so much to do in connection with the museum that I never thought about such things.
 
Here…”

“Here you’re bored.”

“Well, perhaps.
 
But that leads me to another thing.
 
Something I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time.”

“No, I won’t be your lover.”

“I know.
 
Although it would be a delicious little scrap of gossip, wouldn’t it?”

“People would rank it just below the hundred pound tuna caught off the concrete jetty the other day.”

“You think? No, I think it would positively thrill everyone. Still, that isn’t what I want to talk with you about.”

“All right, then we’ll put potential lesbianism on the back burner at least for now.
 
What then?”

“Do you have any money?”

“What, you mean on me? I think I have three dollars.”

“No.
 
I mean actual money.
 
Money in the bank.
 
Money in savings.
 
Money to invest.”

“I think I have three dollars.”

“Be serious.”

“Ok, it’s actually closer to two ninety four, but there’s usually some change lying around…”

“Be serious.”

“OK.
 
No.”

“Not any.”

“A little. Not much. Teacher retirement. You know.”

“All right.
 
No matter.
 
The thing is, I have money.”

“You do?”

“Yes. The Managing Director of The Chicago Art Institute makes an obscene amount of money.
 
I had so much of it I was beginning to feel myself becoming a Republican.
 
That’s why I came here.”

“No Republicans here.”

“I should hope not.
 
But I wondered if you would be interested in going into a project with me.”

“What kind of project?”

“An investment.”

“What investment?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for some time.
 
Nina, do you know the Robinson mansion?”

“Of course I know the Robinson mansion.
 
Everybody does.”

“It’s in disrepair.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to buy it.
 
I think we could…well, fix it up?”

“The Robinson mansion?”

“Yes.
 
It’s a wonderful location.”

“Fix it up for what?”

“A hotel.
 
Or, if you will, a truly sumptuous bed and breakfast. It looks out on the beach; it’s got those wonderful Doric columns, the magnificent balconies…and we could run it together.
 
It would be great fun.”

“You would actually like to run a larger hotel?
 
Deal with the guests, make meals, clean rooms, hear their complaints, all that sort of thing?”

“No, silly, that would be your job.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“I would simply invest the money.”

“Margot, it’s a wonderful idea, except…”

“Except what?”

“I just…I keep forgetting what a short time you’ve been here.”

“It’s a little over a year now; so how long does one have to live in a city before one is allowed to buy property?”

“It’s not that; it’s just a question of
what
property.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You don’t know about the Robinson mansion?”

“What is there to know?”

“No one has told you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Margot, you can’t buy the Robinson mansion.”

“And why not?”

Incredulous that there would be an actual inhabitant of Bay St. Lucy who did not know, and who could actually ask ‘and why not?’…Nina sat and stared until she realized that she was being rude.

Then, gaining as much composure as she could, she said:

“You can’t buy the Robinson mansion, Margot, because it’s haunted.”

This pronouncement produced the effect of shock and awe that Nina expected, but the expression of complete disbelief on Margot Gavin’s face seemed to have been caused by something more than the realization that supernatural forces might render impossible a business deal that she, only a few seconds before, had thought feasible.

And in fact, such was the case.

For Margot, her mouth open and her eyes wide and glazed, was looking not at Nina at all but through the small window in the door that led into the shop.

“Margot, are you all right?”

“No.”

“What’s the matter?
 
Is it the Robinson place?”

“What?”

“The Robinson place.”

“What about it?”

“It’s haunted.”

“I don’t care.
 
That’s the least of our problems.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Allana Delafosse has just arrived.”

Nina turned, peered through the same window Margot was gazing at, and confirmed the fact.

Allana Delafosse was in fact making her way regally through the pottery section, the spectacle of her appearance extinguishing the possible existence of supernatural beings in the Robinson mansion just as completely as the sun’s brilliance extinguishes minor constellations.

Margot’s garden had become, in the last months, a kind of gathering place for the town’s culturally elite.

Nina would never have described herself in just that way.

But Allana certainly would have.

And it was true—and becoming known throughout the village:

If you wanted to know everything, you came and sat for a while at Margot’s place.

“Ok,” said Nina, turning back, “so it’s Allana Delafosse.
 
Maybe she wants to buy something.
 
Offer her coffee.”

“Are you mad?”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Nina, Allana Delafosse doesn’t drink coffee; she drinks tea. And I always seem to offer her the wrong kind.
 
I try to have the best teas in the world here.
 
But when I offer most of them to her, it’s as though I’ve kicked her dog.”

“Well, Allana Delafosse is the
de facto
leader of the city, at least as far as culture is concerned.
 

“But that doesn’t give her the right to…”

At that moment, the door exploded open and Allana herself, dressed entirely in red, save for black leather gloves, a shining and equally black four-inch wide belt, and a white, twenty six-foot radius hat tilted slightly and perfectly askew, as though precisely in tune with the gravitational laws prescribed by the zodiac at just this time of the morning, just this spot in the universe—entered, and pronounced:

“My dear ladies!”

This in and of itself––this three word utterance––was an event worth celebrating and remembering, as was every gesture and sound connected with Madame Delafosse. It was not the “my dear” so much that needed celebrating and adoration; it was the word “ladies,” which had never been said quite the same way on earth, and never would be again.
 
Precisely what she said could not have been written, nor would any professional writer have tried. “Laaaaaydeeez,” was perhaps the closest orthographic fit, but those inky marks on white pulp paper would have failed completely to recreate even part of the total effect of the thing itself or the “Ding an sich” that was Allana.
 
It would not have the tilt of her head, the radioactive smile flashing out from her dark-coffee Creole skin like a thermide bomb detonated in the mouth of a cave.

“My dear laaaaaydeez—how aaahhhhhhrrrr yew this maaaawwwrrrrning?”

Margot, who, despite years in the great city of Chicago, and a decade or so before that in the great city of Los Angeles, and some years before that in various radical communes around The University of California at Berkley––had never encountered a creature more bizarre than she herself, was momentarily stunned, outgunned, and out-outrageoused. So it was left to Nina to reply to the verbal Daryl F. Zanuck cinemascopic presentation that was “Laaayyydeeeeeze, how aaaahhhhhrrrr yew?” by saying simply:

“We’re good!
 
How are you?”

How humiliating.

“I’m wunnnnnnderful!
 
It’s such a deviiiiiiiine maaaaaawwwwwrning, is it not?
 
I do hope I’m not disturbing you?”

Margot had refitted herself by now, and found composure enough to rise and gesture to one of the chairs:

“We’re fine, Allana.
 
Please sit down.
 
I was just going to get some tea.”

“Oh you were?” said Allana, pulling out the chair, evaluating it, cleaning it, disdaining it, hearing its
 
brick-scraping apology, forgiving it, and accepting the petition of the entire garden to join her realm and worship her, all with one brief sweeping magnificent gesture…

…upon the end of which she was somehow there, seated across from Nina at the table, the now-reigning queen of what had once been Margot’s little shop.

She and Nina exchanged a few pleasantries, after which Margot reappeared in the doorway:

“I have several teas to offer. We can have Darjeeling or Assam if we’re in an Indian mood; I have Chinese White Tea, Sencha from Japan, or Ti Kwan Yin from Taiwan.”

Allana’s gaze focused, narrowed, and hardened.
 
She spoke slowly, the words drenched no longer with sweetness but with a great deal of disappointment, mixed only to a slight degree with rancor.

“Why, Assam, of course.”

Margot nodded.

How
, Nina found herself asking Margot mentally,
could you have asked?

Embarrassing both of us like that!

Darjeeling indeed!

“Assam,” Margot said, “it is.”

Darjeeling.

The very thought.

“Dearest Nina. I must admit I am happy to have found you here. There is…well, an ISSUE that has arisen.”

Strange
, Nina thought,
how Allana Delafosse had the ability to speak in capital letters.

The tea appeared, and was properly sipped.

Allana Delafosse broached the ISSUE.

“It concerns this evening, Nina.
 
I assume you’ve heard.”

“Oh.
 
You mean…”

“The writer.”

“Tom Broussard?”

“Yes. Mr. Broussard.”

“Well.
 
I heard he was coming to talk to the writers’ group.”

“Indeed.
 
And it’s just that there do exist, at least in my mind, questions of––how shall I say it?–– APPROPRIATENESS. I’m sure Mr. Broussard has written some very fine things. I must admit to not having read his work myself.”

Cleave Her in Indigo
;
Disembowelment at Dawn
;
Genitalia for the Generals
…

…
how surprising
, Nina found herself thinking,
that these works were not on the shelves of Allana Delafosse’s personal reading room.

“Well.
 
I know that Tom has been quite successful.
 
He’s sold a lot of books in the last years.”

“I see.”

“I know the group has been after him for some time to come and talk with them.”

“Yes.”

“I did speak to him myself, and, I guess, kind of persuaded him to come. Edie Towler—she’s head of the group—had asked him several times.
 
He may have been a bit curt with her.
 
But I talked with Tom, and I think I can assure everybody involved, that he’ll be a really useful guest lecturer.
 
Now, as for what he’s going to say…well, I really don’t know.”

“I had heard that he was your student.”

“Years ago.”

“I see.”

“We didn’t have the closest relationship.”

“And yet I am informed that he dedicated one of his books to you.”

“Yes.”

“Which book?”

“I think it was…no…no, I guess it was
Whore Witch—Which Whore?
”

One second two seconds––

“Can I get us some more tea?” asked Margot.

Allana turned her head, frowned a smile, and said icily:

“I really must be going.”

Then, to Nina:

“Dearest Nina.
 
Several parents have contacted me.
 
Their children trust me.
 
They trust me.
 
And the young people themselves are very excited about this event.
 
Mr. Broussard, the Best Selling Author, is a celebrity to them. They want very much to hear what he has to say.”

“Of course.”

“If I can have your assurance that what he says will be, well, edifying…then, I shall be happy to attend tonight myself, and bring with me several of our young writers.”

“Allana, I haven’t talked to Tom for some time.
 
But I’m sure he’ll be fine.
 
He wouldn’t say anything inappropriate.
 
Especially with young people there.”

The smile returned.

“Wunnnnnnndaful! Then I’m sure it will be a delicious evening!
 
Oh!
 
We are all so looking forward to it. Adieu, then!”